House and Garden 
altogether subordinate 
sprig of foliage, for the 
perfect art must always 
possess the sensual ele¬ 
ment of beauty to attract 
and retain attention. 
Even to his amphorae 
he gives lions’ paws as 
feet; his handles are 
made of twining, peep¬ 
ing serpents, suggestive 
of curiosity; or Medusa 
heads, suggestive of 
defiance of the exami¬ 
nation of the curious; 
or outstretched hands 
impelling your fingers 
to grasp; or amorini 
restraining sea-horses 
eager for the sea of wine 
those amphorae contain. 
The draughtsman’s 
FIGURE 3 
emotion the artist e.xperienced 
when he thought of water, its 
position at Versailles, and its 
synonymity with the King at his 
Court. And I take this oppor¬ 
tunity of saying, if I may rightly 
do so to justify my extrava¬ 
gance, that it was something of 
this emotion which caused me 
when designing a hand-rail fora 
small flight of marble steps for 
one of the most distinguished 
members of your profession to 
place a centaur in one volute 
hurling stones up the steps at a 
dryad peeping out of the oppo¬ 
site volute, remembering the 
days of my youth and the fre¬ 
quent use we made of books at 
school. It is a trivial thing, but 
an artist’s amusement. 
The Greek metal worker or 
sculptor never sought nor receiv¬ 
ed inspiration from plant form; 
we find nothing of this in his 
art save perhaps an occasional 
FIGURE 4 
art and the affectation of delicacy 
of contour of line were evidently 
left for a later date. The work was 
bold and broad and vigorous. The 
one thing necessary was to caress 
and illustrate the emotions in their 
development of the perfect art— 
the most profound pleasure en¬ 
sued. If the Roman loved the bay 
and the vine, it was not because of 
their plant form, but because the 
bay spoke to him of conquest and 
the vine was synonymous with the 
worship of Bacchus and all that 
revelry and riot of the empire 
which succeeded the severity and 
serenity of the consulate years; and 
whenever the Roman silversmith 
introduces that foliage it is ar¬ 
ranged, not in modern form, but 
in wreaths and garlands in such 
nature that it conveys to your im¬ 
agination the room festooned and 
the.crowns awaiting the heads of 
the revellers deep in the worship^ of 
their god (fig. i). 
260 
